The Benefits of Walking

That's how I describe walking whenever discussing it with anyone.

The biggest benefit of developing a daily walking habit is how it will allow you to get some low level "training" in, even on most days when you're ill or injured. What I've noticed is that athletes who do not have the habit will not go walking instead of training, they'll go training!

The benefits of low intensity cardio on your heart are profound. Walking is the king of low intensity cardio. Many athletes write off walking as "too easy" and avoid it because their legs are "too sore" from the other training they've been doing. 

Unfortunately, athletes tend to swing from training well to not training at all. The result is a cycle of improving & declining cardiac fitness. Regular walking helps to balance this cycle.

A walking habit (note: not just the occasional walk) will also help to improve the ratio of easy to hard training in any athlete's programme. As amateur and age-group athletes, we're all guilty of pushing too hard too often. The solution might not be doing less hard training, but doing more very low intensity training: Walking.

Warming up & assessing our readiness for training is best done over an extended period. Most people regard warm-ups as "wasted time" despite knowing that they're necessary, especially as we get older. Walking every morning fits this bill nicely because it also has other functions like giving us time to think in a busy world & calming our stressed out nervous systems (which, incidently, also improves our sleep).